Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent dark blue, appearing black; colorless handles and base-knob with purple streaks; trails in opaque yellow and pale grayish blue. Thick rim-disk, withuneven top surface and tooling indent underneath; concave, cylindrical neck; broad, sloping shoulder; piriform body; large spherical base-knob; two rod handles pressed onto shoulder, drawn up and slightly in, then looped in down, and attached to neck over trail decoration with long, downward trail. Yellow trail applied around lip of rim and then wound in a spiral around neck and shoulder to body, then down across upper part of body as a diagonal line; another trail in blue applied halfway down neck above yellow and wound down to body; both tooled from edge of shoulder to undercurve of body into a festoon pattern with twenty-four upward strokes, then continuing in plain spirals at bottom, ending around knob. Body intact, but most of one handle missing; patches of limy encrustation and iridescent weathering, with some pitting and dulling.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art